A Meta-Analysis of School-Based Social Skills Interventions for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders
Title
A Meta-Analysis of School-Based Social Skills Interventions for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders
Author
Bellini, S., Peters, J., Benner, L., & Hopf, A.
Source
Journal of Remedial and Special Education, Vol. 28 (3)
Year Published
2007
Background
Students with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) often struggle with a number of social skills deficits, including problems with initiating social interactions, interpreting body language and facial cues, taking another person’s perspective, maintaining reciprocity, inferring another person’s interests, and sharing enjoyment. These social skills deficits impact the ability of children with ASD to communicate, participate in new environments, and to establish and maintain relationships with others. Many students with ASD become socially isolated and withdraw because they are unable to establish and maintain meaningful social relationships. These students may experience anxiety, depression, poor academic achievement, and emotional disorders as a result of this social isolation. Since social skills are integral to successful cognitive, emotional, and social development, social skills interventions are an important part of educational programming for students with ASD.
Research Questions
- Are social skills interventions effective for students with ASD?
- If so, what are the effects?
- Are the effects maintained over time?
- Can the effects be generalized from one setting to another?
Findings
- The Social skills interventions explored by this meta-analyses demonstrated only limited effectiveness for children with autism.
- Students with autism have difficulty generalizing the social skills they learn from one situation to another.
- The maintenance effects of social skills instruction were moderately strong. In other words, children with autism remember and use what they learn during social skills instruction relatively well.
- Social skills interventions were most effective for middel school and high school-age students. Students in this age group were also better at maintaining and generalizing what they learned in social skills training.
- Students in elementary school children with Autism Spectrum Disorder showed the lowest intervention and generalization effects.
- The lowest maintenance effects were observed in preschool-age children.
- Social skills interventions delivered in the general classroom showed significantly stronger intervention, maintenance, and generalization effects than social skills interventions delivered in pull-out programs.
Conclusion/Recommendations
The authors of this study recommend a number of changes to the way social skills interventions for children with ASD are implemented and research on social skills is conducted, including:
- Increase the intensity and frequency of social skills intervention delivery. Other researchers have suggested that for social skills interventions to be effective they should include at least 30 hours of instruction over 10-12 weeks. Bellini et al. suggest that one of the reasons for the low level intervention effects found in this meta-analysis may be that none of the studies examined implemented social skills instruction for the recommended 30 or more hours.
- Social skills instruction should take place in the general education classroom. Students with ASD maintain and generalize the social skills instruction they receive in typical classroom settings significantly better than instruction they receive in a pull-out program.
- Match social skills taught to the skill deficits of children in the program. If the student lacks a particular skill like initiating conversation, then an intervention that focuses on skill development would be appropriate. However, the child has the social skills needed to initiate conversations but fails to do so on a regular basis then a strategy that allows the student to practice and improve the performance of their current skill would be ideal.
- Research on social skills interventions should include intervention fidelity data. Without intervention fidelity data it is almost impossible to determine whether an intervention failed because it was poorly implemented or because the intervention was ineffective.